About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

98 A.B.A. J. 14 (2012)
Good Cop, Bad Citizen - As Cellphone Recording Increases, Officers Find the Limelight Uneasy

handle is hein.journals/abaj98 and id is 168 raw text is: THE NATIONAL PULSE
Good Cop, Bad Citizen?
As cellphone recording increases, officers find the limelight uneasy

BY DAVID L. HUDSON JR.
ALKING PAST BOSTON COMMON, THE
city's august park, in 2007, attorney
Simon Glik noticed several police
officers arresting a young man.
Glik heard another bystander say
he thought the police were using excessive force. So
he pulled out his cellphone and began shooting video
of the incident.
After arresting the young man, one of the officers
turned to Glik, saying, I think you have taken enough
pictures. When the officer asked Glik whether his
audio recorder was on, Glik acknowledged it was. Glik
was then arrested for violating a state wiretap law and
two other state offenses.
The charges were subsequently dropped, but for
Glik that was just the beginning. He filed a constitu-
tional tort suit alleging violation of his First and Fourth
Amendment rights. The officers filed a motion to
dismiss, contending they were entitled to qualified
immunity, enabling government officials to avoid
liability if they don't violate clearly established
constitutional or statu-
tory law. But a federal
district court denied
the officers' claim.
And last August, the
1st U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals at Boston
ruled in Glik v. Cunniffe
that the officers violat-
ed Glik's clearly estab-
lished constitutional
right to video-record
the police performing
their duties in public.
Our recognition
that the First Amend-
ment protects the
filming of government
officials in public
spaces accords with the
decisions of numerous
circuit and district
courts, the panel
wrote. The case went
back to the federal dis-
trict court and the par-
ties are in discovery.  A plainclothes Maryland state trc
With the ubiquity the encounter with a camera ato

of cellphones, the ease of video-recording and the
availability of such websites as YouTube, people can
respond quickly to police incidents and broadly circu-
late the recordings.
POINT AND SHOOT
THE PREVALENCE OF CELLPHONE CAMERAS WITH
high enough resolutions for people to record the
police and then be able to disseminate it over the
Internet is a major reason for the video-recording,
says Boston attorney Jeffrey P. Hermes, director of
the Citizen Media Law Project.
But law officers are often uncomfortable. Many
officers are also uncomfortable that their activities
might be displayed on the Internet and otherwise
widely distributed, says Portland, Ore., lawyer Bert
P. Krages, who specializes in the area. Some also have
the impression that photography presents a security
risk and are acting according to a post-9/11 mentality.
Adds Krages: Law enforcement personnel are still
grappling with the idea that ordinary citizens have the
right to take images, whereas previously such photo-
graphs and videos were taken by professionals em-

oper approaches speeding suspect Anthony Graber, who captured
p his motorcycle helmet and later posted the video on YouTube.

14 ABA JOURNAL March 2012

YOUTUBE

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most